


Unhinging the Universe

by TheScholarlyStrumpet (equipoise)



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Freeform, Jossed, Post-Episode: s09e10 Face The Raven, sort of a fix it fic, whouffaldi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-24
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-05-03 04:06:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5275922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/equipoise/pseuds/TheScholarlyStrumpet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clara is gone and The Doctor would tear apart time to find her. </p><p>Post Face the Raven.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unhinging the Universe

“That was never the way the story was supposed to end,” said the dark-eyed girl with the unfamiliar accent. “Someone once said to me –someone I didn’t know very well, I admit, but the words seem so much wiser now– She said that life would be so much simpler if we liked the people we were supposed to like. But then there’d be no fairytales. We lived in a world based on fairytales. Heroes and villains. Knights and sorcerers. Ladies to be rescued and dragons to be fought. We all need stories to tell ourselves. But I don’t think we want to think about what happens after the Happily Ever After. Because that’s not really an end, is it? It’s just a different beginning. ”

Rsiran shifted slightly, looking off in the distance and fiddling with the memory gem.

The petite, frail creature arranged the blanket around herself and cleared her throat. “Is everything alright? Should I start over?”

“No, no,” Yjika assured her, shooting a scolding look at Rsiran, who sat back with an apologetic glance. “It’s fine. Please continue.”

“Well, I suppose it all started on the Earth-that-was. That’s what you call it, right?”

Rsiran made a noise at the back of her throat. “No one’s called it that in…”

“Rsiran! Hush now. It’s a perfectly acceptable name.” She turned back to the dark-eyed woman. “My apologies again. I can have her removed from this sector, if she is bothering you.”

“That won’t be necessary.” She turned that fathomless gaze on Rsiran. “My language may be outmoded but my manners are, I hope, not. You’re quite young, aren’t you?”

Rsiran looked uncertainly at Yjika but nodded. Youth may be a relative thing here but the telltale signs remained.

“I thought as much. You remind me of a student I had once. She was very bright, just got bored easily. Needed to be challenged.” She took a long breath as they held one another’s gaze, a pool of warm amber brown against Rsiran’s blazing red. “Come on then, Rsiran. You can do the asking. If Yjika doesn’t mind, that is.”

Yjika made a humble gesture. She was older, more patient. She could wait for the answers they sought. She’d been waiting this long.

Rsiran blinked at both of them, uncertain if this was a real opportunity or just a test. “I can ask any question?”

The woman nodded. “Can’t guarantee I’ll know the answer, but you can ask.”

Rsiran moved closer, her excitement palpable. “Why did he do it?”

Those already large eyes widened. “You are a wise little thing, aren’t you?” A pregnant pause.  “Everyone has been asking me _how_. All this time, all I’ve gotten is how. How did he do it? How can we fix it? They never like the answer when I say I don’t know. You’re the first to ever be clever enough to ask me why.” She leaned forward, a sparkle in her eye that had not been there before. “And that, my young friend, is a much better story.”

Rsiran looked very pleased with herself as she pushed the memory stone across the low table between them. “Then tell me, Cla Rah, why did the Doctor tear apart time?”

Clara Oswald felt her heart skip that familiar beat at the very mention of his name. Not his real name, but the one he’d chosen. The one she had always treasured most. “Because of me,” she answered simply, though the answer itself was a bloody revelation. “Because I died. And he’d have done anything to bring me back. But he wasn’t the Doctor when he did that, not really. Doctors heal. They mend and fix and make better. The man who brought us all to this state… he wasn’t the Doctor anymore.”

***

No one could remember exactly when or how it happened. Ask anyone and they’d all give you a different account. One was sitting in her living room, watching telly. Another was driving a Duchess in her coach with a team of four. Yet another was competing for the Intergalactic championship of a sport that Clara had never heard of and still couldn’t quite pronounce. Not that she hadn’t picked up quite a few languages in her time here.

By the end of what was probably the 5thcentury, give or take, she was fluent in 40 non-English tongues, some of which had never even been spoken on Earth, and passingly conversational in about 200 more. It was never really enough, but it passed the time.

Time. Ha! What a concept.

When the void first appeared (or rather, they appeared in it), there had been so much fuss and hustle over how they would measure time. The language barrier had certainly not helped and there was no Tardis to translate. In those days, Clara was still a bit confused, almost as much as the rest of them. She, like many others assumed that she was dead.

Well, she was dead. But not at that precise moment.

And the battles that were fought over time and territory, they needed someone with a cool head. Someone who could strategize but wouldn’t take sides. Clara had always been a natural born leader. Trillions of beings ripped from whatever part of their own timelines, terrified and belligerent. But enough of them listened.

It was hard to fight a battle when no one died and the setting kept changing around you. One moment they were in an open field, the next enclosed in tall buildings, the next in a sewer system that Clara wished she didn’t recognize. Clara saw every sun and moon in the galaxy rise and set but never on a schedule that anyone could measure. So they invented time, a new order to keep them all sane.

As sane as you could be when the chair you were sitting in turned into a gaseous cloud one minute and a marble statue the next.

But sentient beings are resilient. They endured.

Territories were loosely formed, later separated into sectors that were marked by people rather than land. You could travel as freely as you liked once you knew where your own kind were in relation. The Judoon had tried to enforce law and order, of course. But the relentless chaos had hit them too hard, over and over, until they could mostly be found sitting in a circle making rhyming noises that made no sense even in their own language.

In that early time, Clara had been respected.

Then the questions began and all too soon someone put two and two together. Ugly rumors were started. No one else had anything better to do.

_The Doctor did this to us. He brought us here. He made this happen._

_The Doctor._

_And his companion._

Clara heard the whispers rise and fall until one day they carried her name as well. At first they had tried to lock her up. But cells wouldn’t stay put so she couldn’t be contained. So every day it was a new jailor. More questions.

_What has he done? How did he do it? Tell us, Clara. Make him stop. Make him bring back time._

She had shouted at them until her voice was hoarse and her throat raw. She didn’t know. She hadn’t been there when it happened. She was just as lost as they were.

Sometimes they believed her and went away. Other times, she fed them stories. They lapped it up, true or not. She’d always been a brilliant liar. After a while, she just talked until they went away. It didn’t make her angry anymore. They just wanted to get home. If there even was a home left to get to. They’d all lost something, after all. And, in its own way, it was nice to have them listen, even knowing she’d only disappoint them.

Young Rsiran had surprised her. So many questions and accusations lobbed at her from all directions and it took a child to ask her the most obvious one.

_Why._

_Why_ had he done this terrible thing?

 _Why_ had he unhinged the universe?

Because he was looking for her, of course. It had been so long ago (or at least their constructed sense of time told her so) that she could barely remember. But the words were on her lips and once she’d released them, she realized it was true. And it was so simple to answer with the truth, for once.

“The man who isn’t the Doctor has stopped time to look for me,” she breathed. She hadn’t aged a day in the void and yet her bones had felt ancient until that moment. She looked at Rsiran and Yjika, her sweet young jailors. “Help him. Help me. Help us to find one another.”

_Help him._

The words echoed from sector to sector.

_Help him find Clara._

_Help Clara find him._

They bounced off of walls and floated up from beneath floorboards. They were mumbled around mouthfuls of dirt by those who’d been unfortunate enough to wake up in a grave this time. They were sung and trumpeted from every corner of the universe.

Until she saw him at last.

He looked exactly as he had before, long and lean with angry eyebrows and tender hearts. Her Doctor. And yet not a Doctor right now. She would need to fix that. Pulling on a long-forgotten mantle, Doctor Clara put her hands on her hips and looked up into that craggy face she still loved with from within the deepest chambers of her heart.

“You’re an idiot,’ she said, at last.

He blinked at her, incredulous, joyful, sorrowful, and a wee bit mad. “So are you.”

His voice was rough, harsh from either too much use or not enough but his gaze was softer than she could ever remember seeing it.

“I’ve been practically running the place. After you made such a wreck of it.” She crossed her arms and tilted her head. The room flickered out of focus and became a dark alleyway. She knew this alley. Not in the way she knew most places. She had only been here once before but you don’t tend to forget the places you’ve died.

Oh, and how fitting it was to have this conversation here.

His nostrils flared and her lower lip wobbled. They wouldn’t be able to hold this standoff much longer. Beings of all shapes and sizes moved around them, gave them a wide berth but fixed them with curious stares. She wished there was somewhere private they could do this, but there was no telling how long those walls would exist.

“You have to fix this. You have to be the Doctor, again.”

“The Doctor lost you. I don’t think I could do that again.” His red rimmed eyes were watering.

Both crying shamelessly in the street, barely feet away and too afraid to touch. He was afraid she wasn’t real. She was afraid that he was.

“You’re tired,” she observed.

“Exhausted,” he admitted.

“Then just stop. Undo whatever it is you’ve done and let it go.” The sobs were choking her now, halting her words. All of this, all of this to tell him goodbye once more? It wasn’t fair. Nothing was ever fair.

“No,” he all but growled the word, taking a long step toward her. “Not yet. Not until you’re safe.”

Clara was too wise now. She had his timelines in her head and a few dozen centuries of her own (providing their conceived time held up to real world standards) on top. “It will stay broken then, won’t it? Don’t lie to me, Doctor.” He hadn’t earned the title back but what else could she call him? It was the only name she’d ever been allowed to use.

He looked down. He was closer now. She could see his eyelashes, darkened and clumped together by tears, brush against his weathered cheeks.

“Yes. But just a crack. I can fix the rest. I can fix this.”

She shook her head. “You know what a crack in time can do. You’ve seen it before. Cracks grow. They expand to swallow universes. There’s no reset button this time.”

“I can save you.”

She knew those words. She’d heard them before. She looked up, suddenly horrified. “What happened to Gallifrey?”

He didn’t answer. He was so close, now, she could swear she heard both hearts thundering away within his narrow chest. She realized it was because she was hugging him, pulled tightly into his angular body, her ear to his sternum. She closed her eyes and listened to the music they made. Unlike any other in the universe. And she had experienced quite a bit of that, by now.

“How?” she heard herself ask. “How can you save me if you wouldn’t let me save you?”

He sighed heavily, his grip on her tightening. “There is a way. Come with me.”

_To the Tardis. All of time and space in a big blue box._

“It’s here?” she asked, feeling silly the minute the words escaped.

“Where else would she be?”

_Same old, same old._

She stepped back, still in the circle of his arms but she needed to see his face, now. “I should be furious with you.”

“Yes. But can you be furious on the way?" He tilted his head in the direction he wished them to go.

“You did everything I told you not to do.”

“I learned from the best.”

She tried to glare at him but there was no heat in it. Not when it felt like a missing piece of her heart had finally been returned to her. Not when she knew exactly what it was like to throw away everything else in the hopes of gaining back someone you love. So now they'd both betrayed the other. It was almost fitting. Perhaps centuries that were not centuries had taught Clara some humility, after all.

"I can fix this," he repeated, earnestly.

It was a lie. It had to be a lie. She went anyway, tucking one hand in his much larger one. She needed to believe him. The Doctor – the one she knew – always gave her something to believe in. His bony fingers were a life line. To the past and the promise of a future.

Because this time, he was the one in _her_ timestream.


End file.
